One rock at a time

The triangular white patch at top right is not a chunk of quartz, but paint. We speculated that the rock had once been part of a wall with a fence post, and paint had slopped onto the rock. Or maybe part of a stone fence, and the white triangle is an old blaze marking a ski trail.

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I was sitting on the dock at the lake, doing paperwork. 

My husband was in the water doing rockwork – rebuilding a rock retaining wall next to the dock. 


This called for diving now and then to find a rock to fill a hole in the wall. 

He’d disappear, surface, heave a rock, then do it again.

As he pulled himself up the ladder on to the dock he said, “I felt like Sisyphus at times, but it was not futile!”

He explained how he had searched for a rock large enough to anchor part of the wall, and found it eight feet down on a slope. He’d dive, roll the rock once (it was heavy), surface for air then do it again. 

Sometimes it would roll back, just like the mythological rock. 

But he kept at it.

And that is the rock in the picture.  About the size of a 20-pound turkey, but much heavier.  The rock bears a patch of paint. This suggests it had an earlier lifetime back on land, and ended up at the bottom of slope much like the rock of myth — only in this case with the fishes.

There is a lesson here I think about how we just have to keep at the things we want to do and achieve.

There is always room for improvement in some area of our personal and work life.  And, what is often missing is the ability to just KEEP AT IT.

A sense of accomplishment often comes from just doing. One rock at a time. While some activities are best done from beginning to end others don't have a beginning or and end, but require steady effort and attention.

The Myth of Sisyphus and the futility of it all is only true, I feel, if the rocks you are pushing have no meaning for you.

Rock on,
Coach Minda

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